page_title: Bilisht
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Bilisht / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Bilisht mosque Shqip: Xhamia e Bilishtit
context_page_description: Bilisht is a town and a former municipality in Korçë County, south-eastern Albania. At the 2015 local government reform it became a subdivision and the seat of the municipality Devoll. It was the seat of the former Devoll District. The population at the 2011 census was 6,250. The town is 9 km from the border with Greece at Kapshticë. The closest Greek village across the border is Krystallopigi in the Florina regional unit. Bilisht is at 890 meters above sea level and has a continental climate with cool summers and cold winters. It serves as an economic centre for the local agriculture, mining, food and textile industries. The football club is Bilisht Sporti.
context_section_description: A fortified location dating from the early Iron Age exists nearby Bilisht.
  Bilisht was part of the Ottoman Empire for several centuries. Muslims in the kaza (district) of Bilisht owned tenet farms (baștina) in the late 16th century. Bilisht became an important centre for the Sufi Halveti order and maintained two or three tekkes in the town that were reliant on its tekke in Ohrid. During the Great Eastern Crisis, the Treaty of San Stefano nearly placed Albanian areas such as Bilisht in a proposed large Bulgarian state. Shortly thereafter it was superseded by the Treaty of Berlin that left the town and its surrounding area in the Ottoman Empire. In the late Ottoman period, the nahiya (sub-district) of Bilisht was a centre of revolutionary activity for Albanian and Aromanian cheta groups, whom collectively numbered some 150-200 individuals. Until the early twentieth century, Bilisht experienced population growth from the surrounding rural area, as it was a centre for artisan activities and trade located on important transport lines. It also made the town vulnerable in times of crisis to robberies and war.
  Following the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), Bilisht became part of Albania. Some Muslim Albanian villages on the Greek side of the border had Bilisht as their market town until their inhabitants were sent to Turkey during the Greco-Turkish exchange of populations (1923), based on religious criteria. Due to the Albanian census of 1923, the urban status of Bilisht was recognised. During the interwar period a tekke of the Rifa`i Sufi Order existed in Bilisht and part of the surrounding Muslim rural population emigrated to Australia. Bilisht was also the centre of the Bilisht district.
  In the 1960s, the area around Bilisht and neighboring Korçë had the highest densities of population in mountainous districts within the country (500 metres and above). During the early 1990s, Christianity and later Islam were revived in Albania. As such in Bilisht, the Orthodox church of Saint Veneranda (Shën e Premte) was rebuilt in 1992 followed by a new mosque in 1995. The town in post communist Albania has also been a recipient of in-migration by a small number of people from other parts of the country, due to pre-existing family connections. New shops have opened in Bilisht and it has been one of a number of towns in the wider area that has attracted investment.
caption: Mosque of Bilisht
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